27. Emi
Iwoke to the smell of burning. Bolting out of bed, I stumbled on the tangle of sheets.
“Wolf?”
He was in the kitchen, fanning the oven with a faded dish towel. “Sorry. I wanted to bring you breakfast, but, uh—”
My racing heart settled back to a normal rhythm. “But you burned the biscuits?” I wrapped my arms around his waist from behind and tucked my chin around his shoulder to see the damage. “I think they’re beyond salvaging.”
“I should have just toasted them over the fire.”
I kissed his cheek. “I’ll make new ones. Those were getting stale anyway.”
He ducked away, and bless him, he was embarrassed.
“Besides, we’ll want enough for Amber. She should be here soon.”
“Maybe you can use your helping magic to help me figure out this kitchen after,” Wolf joked.
He came to stand with me while I whipped up batter and formed flattened circles to bake in the already hot oven. I turned it down before putting them in, suppressing a chuckle at how high he’d set it.
When they were baking, I leaned next to him against the counter and my mind went to Amber’s impending arrival and the plan we’d discussed.
“I hope this works.” I accepted the place in Wolf’s arms when he opened them for me, and relished the warmth of his chest as he held me close. “Wolf?”
“Hm?” he hummed as he kissed my temple.
I could only whisper my next words. “I’m scared.”
“Why? What did that shiny-ass witch say to you? I’ll kill her.” He made me laugh, which I’m sure was his intent.
I’d been thinking long and hard about what Diamond and Amber had told me. They’d both warned me about the cost of magic, and I could see the toll those costs had taken on both of them. I couldn’t help picturing Amber’s devastated face as she’d told her story. When she’d taken the last few beans her foolish brother, Jacks, had bargained for, and wished to make them grow, she’d only wanted to feed her starving village. But plants had gone wild all around her to deadly effect, and she now lived in exile on the beanstalk she’d grown from the final bean, all alone out on the Yellow Plain.
To assuage her guilt, Amber now saved lives by keeping travelers away from the Mist. It gave me hope that witches could be good-hearted, not all selfish and evil. If I needed any more proof that Grandma Ruby was the villain in this story, I had it. She had chosen curse magic and condemned countless Anterrans to misery and death, and for what?
Now that I might have the power to help, I was worried what it would cost. I couldn’t risk hurting anyone—especially Wolf, so warm and solid with his arms around me—but I also couldn’t run and hide from the truth anymore.
“I’m a bit scared of my magic, but also I’m scared that I’m like them. Am I as selfish as my family? Is that an inescapable part of who I am?”
“Of course not.” He gripped my shoulders at arms length to stare me in the eyes. “Why would you think so?”
“Because breaking this curse would mean saving a lot of people, but all I care about is saving you. All I can think about is freeing you from these woods and your pain, and I know that’s selfish because I care for my own sake. Because I can’t stand the thought of losing you to the Mist.”
With his hands stroking up and down my arms, he smiled as soft and sweet as I’d ever seen. “Em, that’s okay. It’s not selfish to want things for yourself, or to care more for one person than for others. It’s only selfish if you take for yourself at the cost of someone else, or without considering others at all. You, who spends all her time caring for others, could never be selfish. If you need proof, just look to your wish.”
A wish to help was simple, really, but after yesterday, I saw all it could encompass. It was more than healing. I vowed to do better than my family before me. With every last sharp shard of myself, I would atone for the harm done by the self-serving and narcissistic people in my life. Maybe, one day, that would extend to forgiving myself, too.
“Amber was the one who got me to recall exactly what my wish was. She gave me hope.”
“You know, I’ve always liked that witch,” Wolf said with a sardonic grin.
I batted his shoulder. “I thought you hated witches.”
“I’ve recently been proved wrong on that front.” His teasing tone melted into sincerity as he curled me into his chest. “What you are does not define who you are. You are a witch, Em, but you are also the most wonderful human I’ve ever met. You are the sister to a self-absorbed swine, but you are kind and compassionate. You are the daughter to absent parents, but you became fierce and independent. And yes, you may be the granddaughter of the greatest evil this world has known, but you are also the Emerald Witch in your own right, with a legacy that will be defined only by you. I believe in you.”
The lump in my throat made speaking difficult. I wanted so badly to live up to his words and faith in me. “I hope you’re right. This has to work.”
“It will. Believe in yourself, little witchling.”
“If I do, it’s because of you. I don’t know exactly when I started to see the incredible man inside the wolf, but I owe you a lot. Both the man and the wolf.”
He went willingly into the kiss when I tipped my head for him, as eager for my distraction as I was for his. In fact, he seemed already detached from whatever might be going on outside the cottage walls, focused only on me and the bond between us, as if he, too, was running from the thoughts of what came next.
I sank into him, tucking my face into his neck where I breathed deep of his woodsy spruce and vetiver smell. Soft hair tickled my cheek as I kissed my way up his stubbled jaw and found his lips. Soft and claiming, they fused over mine. His hand splayed up my back, and we kissed like we weren’t a witch and a wolf destined to hate each other. In the breaths shared between our lips, there’d never been a curse. There was no misty forest beyond the window, no monsters gathered in the shadows.
Nothing waited on us save our next kiss, and the one after that, and the one after it. We gave ourselves over to them until we were too lost in the clouds of need and want and each other to heed the call of distant beeping.
Amber arrived a little later to the acrid smell of burned biscuits and the dulcet melody of my cursing over the tray clattering out of the oven. I couldn’t bring myself to regret it.
“The enclave is where I have the most connection to the forest,” Amber told us as we ate biscuits with the black bits cut off and drenched in enough butter that none of us cared. “It”s already powered by my magic. The network of roots from the thicket walls alone stretches a great distance, and I planted amber in the soil all around to amplify and hold my magic. I can work best from there.”
We agreed and prepared to leave. While Wolf stepped into the Mist, Amber checked in with me. “You have them?” she asked.
I patted the pocket of my cape, having chosen my green hood today. I wanted its familiar comfort.
“Right here.” The hard bulge was the small pouch that Locke had pressed into my hands before he brought me back through the gate from Zocere. Unable to resist, I slipped my finger past the drawstring to rub the cool, smooth surface of one of the cut emeralds inside.
There were eight in total, worth far more than was fair for my actions. All I’d done was make a wish, after all, but Locke had insisted. I’d already told Amber about them, and we talked more about the cagey smuggler (who apparently sometimes traded with her brother, Jacks) as we followed the red and tawny wolf toward the enclave.
“I’m still not sure I can do this.” My fingers smoothed over one of the stones.
I’d tried using the emeralds to channel my magic when I was practicing. I could feel my connection to the gemstone, like it was part of my magic, but I wasn’t sure what to do with it.
“It’s different for everyone. We’ll figure it out together,” Amber reassured.
“What if Ruby’s curse is anchored by more than her blood? What if we trigger something worse by trying to end it?”
Amber squeezed my arm. “If we don’t try, then we’ve already lost. Anterra is dying in the Mist, Emi.”
“I know. I just hope this is enough.”
She didn’t answer beyond walking close and lending me her comforting presence while we trekked across Aglonbriar forest to the enclave. When branches rustled and twigs snapped, I barely had time to worry about what monsters might be nearby before Amber made shrubs sway and close together, protecting us. I could only aspire to control like that. A sudden rush of gratitude flooded me for the more experienced witch’s presence. I’d take all the help I could get.
At the towering wall of brambles, Wolf stepped through the gap to shed his furry form, and then turned back to address us.
“I’ll get Bear and Lynx to help me. We don’t know what might react to you trying to break the curse, but we won’t let anything attack you. I smelled a few beasts nearby, and more might get drawn to the noise as you work, but I won’t let them touch you, I swear.” Wolf’s mercurial gaze held mine. “Robin and Hawk can scout from the air, too.”
When Wolf returned, he had willing recruits at his side. They looked eager to help, glad to be included in his plans this time. Robin reached for the green fabric of my hood with a relaxed smile that affirmed my choice. There was no need to bring Ruby’s red into an already fraught situation.
“I like this one. Much better for camouflage,” Robin said with an approving nod.
“I understand why you hate the red, but I hope after today, it will lose meaning. Hopefully this all will become a bad memory, as hazy as the Mist that caused it.” Surprisingly, I could say it with my head held high. I wouldn”t be like Ruby. It was time to change what being a witch meant in this place.
Robin shrugged. “Just saying. Green is a better color. I”d wear this one.”
Wolf chuckled. “You”re just saying that because we all try to make you wear red. Because, you know, a robin”s red—”
Robin hit him before he could finish. “If you say one word about my breasts, I”ll have your girlfriend here make your guts come up out of your nose.”
Laughing, I offered an alternative to disemboweling Wolf while deliberately ignoring that other word Robin had called me. “How about this? If this works, I”ll give you this green hood. I can stick to the red once it doesn”t have the pall of the curse hanging over it. I look better in red anyway.”
Robin grinned. “Deal. Now get your boyfriend in line so we can break this curse once and for all.”
“He”s not—”
Robin left me stuttering when she whisked away.
We hadn”t talked about what we were, Wolf and I. It felt inevitable, but also delicate and breakable with so much unsaid. Wondering what we might be to each other after this was over was a pointless spiral of what-ifs.
If I failed, they’d all hate me again. They’d be stuck here, and even if Wolf didn’t blame me, he’d resent me on some level. Plus the Mist would keep taking from them until they were all gone, one by one, reduced to their monsters.
But if it worked, then what? Would Wolf go back to whatever his life had been before? Would he leave here with Robin and Lynx and the others and never look back? I wouldn’t blame him for wanting to leave the awful memories of this place behind him, and me along with them. He deserved to seek a better life after this, and I wasn’t part of that. My family was the reason for all his suffering.
There was no reason for Wolf to want me around once he was free. Life had taught me that people didn’t want me around for long, not once I outstayed my usefulness to them. I was always too much, or not enough. I was too tall to be inconspicuous, too awkward to be elegant, too quiet to be social, or too bold to be ladylike. I was never right in a world that had no place for me. The old void yawned inside me to claw at whatever happiness I’d felt in the past few days.
This time, for right now, I was in the right place doing the right thing with people relying on me. What happened after didn’t matter. What happened to me didn’t matter.
Yanking my green cloak around me, I squared my shoulders and forced a confident look. My own inner monsters could wait. All that mattered were the people inside these enclave walls, and I couldn’t let them down. It was time to undo the damage of my family on Aglonbriar forest and all its inhabitants. Then maybe I could work on my own damage.